Electronic jingles and beeps drive me mad

I am fast growing to hate electronic jingles, and in particular the Nokia telephone tune.

About a month ago we all had our desktop phones at work replaced with little mobile Nokias. They work fine, but their little “dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah, dah” tune is really starting to get up my nose. There are 120 of us in my office, it’s a big open plan space, and almost every single person has the standard jingle on their phone.

There was a MORI survey a few weeks ago of 10,000 people, which is a massive survey group, asking them which electronic jingles they recognised and could name the company. Unsurprisingly, Nokia and MacDonalds came in the top three. I can’t remember what the other one was, but I’m sure it was something equally inane.

When asked as part of the same survey which advertising jingles people could remember and which they could identify the product or service for, the most recognisable were those irritating ones for insurance companies or money web sites such as moneysupermarket.com and confused.com. Top two in the irritating league of images were the fat moustachioed ‘Go Compare’ opera singer and the nausea inducing Meerkats of comparethemarket.com.

I cannot count the number of times I have sat in a train listening to someone’s annoying overspill sound from their headphones and in the end resorting to listening to my own music to block it out, despite wanting to sit there in peace and quiet.

The world is full of noise, and it's getting worse. The number of places that you can go to get a restful or peaceful time, or simply to sit without being disturbed by electronic noise is getting less and less. I once had to sit on a plane next to a child who had an electronic game with them to keep them amused – not unreasonable in itself – but one which kept giving off electronic beeps and an annoying jingly tune when the kid managed to catch a ball or something from the pixies or whatever imaginary creature was featured in the game being played. It drove me nuts; I put up with it for about half an hour and then asked the parent if they could switch the sound off. All I got was abuse, and so I moved seats – luckily the flight was not full.

I hate unnecessary noise. There is nothing better than a peaceful garden with just birdsong and the sound of a gentle breeze in the trees, or an empty beach with only the lapping of waves on the shore. I dislike background noise in bars and restaurants; that isn’t why I have gone there – I have gone to enjoy a drink and conversation with friends, not inane musack. Slot machines constantly pinging away are guaranteed to get me out of a pub in record time and I find it very difficult to hear with lots of loud music or chatter in the background, so now don't bother to go to parties. I'm not anti-social, I just don't see the point if you can't talk to people properly. 

I am on the verge of becoming a hermit simply to get away from the noise. And it distresses me that teenagers seem unable to function without it. They are constantly plugged into their i-pods or phones with bass throbbing out of the headphones at what must be ridiculous volumes doing their hearing no good at all.

I am perfectly happy at home on my own with no telly, radio or music on and just a good book and purring cat for company. The opportunity is getting rarer and rarer, but I won’t give up. I will continue to seek out the times and places where it is quiet and restful. And if I can’t find them, I will jump off a cliff rather than go mad with all the electronic beeps and tunes we are subjected to. They will soon drive me insane!